I Hate Sally Morgan

Thought for the day:

Kate Moss has never done a day's work in her life, she's merely fortunate that she happens to look beautiful doing nothing. She employs no skill in her work. She merely shows up. I therefore conclude that her wealth and success is not an achievement, any more than winning the lottery is.

I forgot to respond to Mr Cat6 and his confusion over the issue of orbital-rotational resonance. Mr 6 states, "Is the Earth's ratio not 1:365, then? 1 rotation around the Sun=365 rotations of the earth on its own axis? How is mercury special?" See, this is where I too was having an issue. As far as I can tell, the earth isn't in resonance because it doesn't orbit exactly 365 times a year. It's more like 365.25 times. That said, I'm guessing there must be a repeating period that sees the earth and sun regularly in phase start position, even if it's like gazillions of years/orbits/rotations. I'm still not really straight with the concept. I'm guessing it's a loose term.

I love that word "gazillions". It's a real word apparently. I typed it in an email a few days ago and I was expecting the spell checker to moan about it, but it didn't. So I looked it up, and it turns out to be a real word. That can be your interesting fact of the day. Word Web defines it as, "A very large indefinite number (usually hyperbole)".

I feel officially sorry for Britney. She's obviously got issues and it really can't be help having slimy guys poking cameras up her dress every time she sets foot on the street. Some people really are foul. The number of hangers on round her now is really quite disgusting. Who is this Lufti guy that's just showed up? Claims to be her friend and manager, but left her in tears on the street the other day. Some friend he is. She should ditch everyone and go undercover for 6 months. Go work on a farm or something where no one knows her.

I came close to a breakdown once. It's the oddest thing, losing your mind. I knew something was wrong because I could feel that the people around me were concerned about me. I didn't realise I was acting erratically though. I didn't know what they were concerned about. And the only way to get better, is to walk away from the cause of the problem. That's usually difficult though. One tends to walk away from things casuing a problem before the problem really starts if it's easy to do. In my case, the cause of the problem was my job. Walking out was an almost instant cure. Jumping from that precipice was a terrifying step however. I took about 6 weeks paid sick leave, then went back and told them I was leaving. It was the most liberating thing I've ever done. I shut the house up, got on a plane to Taiwan and was working again in two weeks. Problem solved.

I must have been terminally bored last night because I started to watch "Sally Morgan, Psychic to the Stars", or as I prefer to call her, "that lying cow who feeds on the grief and misery of vulnerable people". Some people think psychics are harmless of course, and a few fruit cakes actually believe these people can really speak to the dead. I think they belong in jail or mental homes, but lets not dwell on that. Last night Psychic Sally went to comedienne Helen Lederer's house. Helen is either an accomplished actress, or she was taken in by the old bag, because she seemed to believe the tripe that she was told.

The part that bothered me most came when Helen told Psychic Sally that she was worried about her daughter. Sally told her not to worry, and that everything was fine. It seemed pretty harmless when it happened, but after Sally left counting her money, Helen summed everything up. Helen was apparently relieved that Sally had told her not to worry about her daughter because she had been worried she wasn't eating properly. Can you see where I'm going with this? Unqualified, lying, fraudulent, and thick Psychic Sally Morgan told someone they don't need to worry about their daughter, who it turns out has a potential eating disorder.

If this child, she's just 17 by the way, develops an eating disorder now, and I find out about it, I'm going to make it my personal mission in life to put Morgan in jail. You heard it here first folks.

I almost lost the will to live before the programme ended, and rather than risk falling into a coma, I turned it off, so I don't know what else the cow got up to. Man. I hate psychics.

Going through some notes

OK, got gazillions of notes on the last entry. First things first, lets deal with the anonymous ones. My noter seems to think that my comment, "Well, quelle suprize, the holy rollers were less willing to admit promiscuity than the students studying medicine." was presumptuous. Guilty as charged, can't deny it. I was stating an opinion, based on personal observation, with which you are most welcome to disagree. It wasn't a baseless conclusion however, which is my beef with the Cambridge study.

When I was at uni, thousands of years ago, I found that each student house generally contained 4-6 students. There would always be one nocternal psycho, one committed academic, and one hardcore Christian in each house. This is of course a generalisation, and there were invariably some students in each house who either fitted none of these groups, or straddled multiple groups, but you get the picture. I found that the Christians had a nauseating tendency to wear their virginity like a badge of honour, even when, quite frankly, some of them were really only virginal in the very loosest sense of the word.

I remember one female Christian student in particular who constantly claimed that she was a proud virgin, but still shared a bed with a nocternal psycho type serval times a week. She claimed that she "would be cheating God" if she had sex. And I'm quite sure that technically, she never did have sex, but she clearly wasn't exactly innocent either. It is this kind of behaviour that was responsible for the forming my opinion.

I've been thinking further about the Cambridge survey and something new has stuck me. The survey compares academic success across different subjects. I think we can assume that a Theology grade A, is being compared with a medical degree grade A. I wonder if it's possible to compare more and less promiscuous people studying the same subject. I think that would be more meaningful.

Abbey makes the point that people too busy bonking may have less time to study. That's what the study concludes, and it may be quite correct. You can't make the link without evidence however.

Dragonish claims that cappuccino is expensive here. Actually I don't know the price because I never drink it, but I'm going to look through the window of Starbucks on the way home. I just guessed at £3.

And Mr Cat6 Is coming to Oxford. You'll have a great time. It's a great city to visit, about as traditionally British as it gets I suppose. You're about 40 minutes from London by train, so you can experience the worst rail network in the universe. Or you could go by road, very easy from Oxford. I live about an hour from Oxford, and I work about 12 miles away. You're really lucky, I never got any cool trips like that when I was studying.

Sensitive Soul makes a good point, you have to be careful, look hard enough and everything you say is potentially offensive. That's true and it's why free speech is important. No one has the right to not be offended however, it's the price you pay for free speech.

I went to Devon at the weekend. My mother reminded me that I need to buy new tax for the car. Long story, but I'm actually driving my father's car you see. My car is in dry dock. I haven't got around to registering my father's car in my name, and they sent him the tax reminder, because they don't know he died. So, I have to go and shell out £180 or something obscene today. It's lucky mother reminded me or I would have parked an untaxed car at Heathrow airport for 2 weeks, which would have been certain death.

I found a leather bound copy of Edgar Allen Poe stories in my father's things and mother said I could have it. It's a lovely book. I think I've probably read most of the content at one time or another, but the book is special.

Foul thoughts

There was a thing in the Daily Telegraph yesterday that claimed the average cappuccino is about 400 Calories. And if one cup costs about £3, and you have one every day (not including weekends), that comes to £783 a year or £786 if it's a leap year and 29 Feb is a weekday. More to the point, it's 104,400 Calories, or 104,800 if you had that extra one on 29 Feb, which is clearly quite disgusting. I wonder how much saturated fat that would equate to. Foul anyway. I only drink black coffee. I wonder how much caffein I have. I bet it's too much. I should think I have about 5 or 6 cups a day. I don't want to think about it. It must be worse if you have those cappuccino mocha things, and much much worse if you add sugar. I don't have sugar. That must make it OK.

There is a great report in the Telegraph today about students having sex and how it affects their academic performance. I don't have any strong feelings. I don't care whether students are bonking or not. The story is however quite hysterical. I think I'm going to take this point by point, my comments in bold:

The headline is "Sex bad for grades, Cambridge survey shows". I'll come back to this, but it's completely subjective.

"It questioned more than 1,000 undergraduates and found that students at poorly performing colleges slept around the most". You mean it found that studenmts who told you they were sleeping around a lot were performing badly. People lie about sex more than any other topic in the universe. You get false positives and false negatives.

"The online poll, published in the student magazine Varsity, found that students studying medicine had the most number of sexual partners (eight) while those reading theology had the fewest (two)". Well, quelle suprize, the holy rollers were less willing to admit promiscuity than the students studying medicine.

"Ed Cumming, the magazine's associate editor, said: 'Some results confirm long-held stereotypes. Those involved in postgraduate study are less likely to have had sex than their undergraduate counterparts'. What are you talking about Ed? All your postgrads must have been undergrads in the last 4 or 5 years at the most. Some of them will only have stopped being undergrads a matter of weeks ago. Do they get a letter from the dean reinstating them as virgins when they get their bachelors degree? I don't remember getting mine. Perhaps it only happens at Cambridge.

OK, as I promised, back to the headline, "Sex bad for grades, Cambridge survey shows". Lets assume for one moment, that in some weird parallel universe, it can actually be demonstrated that students who bonk the least get the best grades, where is the causal link? Couldn't you just as easily state, "Good academics lack sex drive", or "Academic failure causes students to seek comfort in sexual relationships", or perhaps, "Promiscuity is caused by lack of confidence stemming from academic failure", or even, "Ink used by university on pass certificates damages sex drive".

In short, unless you can prove somehow that those students who do badly, do better when they cut out the sex, or the other way round, you can't make any conclusion at all regarding which one causes the other.

I got the blues

I am ecstatic this morning over news that a leaked home office document has fallen into the hands of the Tories and suggests very strongly that the ID card scheme is essentially in chaos and has been delayed until 2012. It's not the absolutely greatest news because it would seem that the purveyors of all that is evil still intend to roll-out biometric ID cards to foreign nationals this year. That of course means my wife. I had hoped to get her naturalised before the deadline, but that is not likely now since the earliest she can apply for citizenship is Dec 2008. I myself am still considering civil disobediance.

There is a wonderful leader by Simon Heffer in the Telegraph this morning. It's essentially an anti-Europe rant, but so beautifully crafted. I aspire to be able to write like this.

A web site has been created to make it easy to find out where each local MP stands on the issue of a referendum on the Treaty of Lisbon. It also makes it very easy to contact one's own MP and make one's feelings felt. I've actually written three times to my local MP in as many months, but I think she is due one more communication from me since she is apparently against a referendum and is therefore morally bankrupt. Everyone in Britain should be doing this.

I uninstalled Limewire last night and replaced it with Frostwire,, which appears to work very well. So, problem solved.

There is a lot of weird stuff in the news today.

Apparently an award winning book based on the classic three little pigs story has been excluded from partaking in a government agency annual awards scheme because, wait for it, it might offend muslims. No seriously, I'm not making this up, the three little pigs is now offensive to muslims. I'm not even going to comment. Oh fuck it; yes I am, anyone offended by the three little pigs should be kicked in the arse until their ears bleed, honestly I'll do it if you like. I'm going to see if I can find a copy for Dumpy.

But, stranger still was this story about a couple of weirdos from Yorkshire who got thrown off a bus because one of them was wearing a dog leash, and the other was leading her along by it. It is bizarre behaviour of course, and I suppose people who behave is a bizarre manner should probably expect negative reactions. But why were they thrown off the bus? The official line from the bus company is that the leash would be dangerous if the bus braked sharply. Of course it would, I've seen hundreds of people garotted by their own necklaces and neck ties on those buses, lethal they are, lethal!

An then finally there is this story from Australia. In sort, man gets his arm stuck in a crocodile's mouth. Incidentally, what kind of head case goes within arm's reach of a bloody crocodile? To do so is foolhardy in the extreme. Anyway, his mate sees him attempting to extract arm from mouth of said reptile, and in an effort to assist, shoots twice at the beast. The first shot is good, the second hits his mate in the arm. Some friend eh? The good news is that, although the guy has been savaged by a crocodile and then shot by his mate, he survives almost intact and is recovering in hospital. There is no report on the health of the crocodile.

I'm feeling very upbeat today about stuff in the news, and even the 10am discovery that I had put my underwear on back to front did nothing to disperse the feeling. I simply switched them round and went about my business as normal. I felt so up beat in fact, that I started writing a blues number. I've only got two verses so far, but I think it has potential.

My woman has left me, she's miles away
My boy has gone with her, don't know what to say
The dishes are dirty, my clothes are too
I've got those no pants, no shirt, cold ass laundry blues

I wake up at night, and there's nobody there
There's nothing for breakfast, and the milk has grown hair
I'm late for work, don't know what to do
I've got those empty belly, no milk, cold ass laundry blues

I hate winter

It was sun shining when I arrived at the office this morning. It is still trying to be nice. I'm so fed up with winter. I hope summer this year will be nice. Last year was most disappointing. This year I fully intend to take my family somewhere in the summer. I don't know where, but somewhere, and I want it to be sunny.

I was fairly sure that the Princess of Wales was nothing more than a tragic accident. I'm still fairly sure in fact. But you have to admit, there are a few odd things emerging from this inquest. The driver, Henri Paul, appeared to have a very high level of carbon monoxide in his blood after the crash. I thought it had been explained by the fact that he was a heavy cigar smoker. It seems however that an expert witness has said this is not so. He suggested that the reading was either a cock-up or a conspiracy.

My Limewire has stopped working. I don't like it, I don't trust it, and I hardly ever use it, but I do want a peer to peer service. I don't know why, it isn't working. I've reinstalled and I've read that there is an issue with new Java updates. It's not the firewall, I took that out and it still doesn't work. I'm betting I've updated Java since I last used Limnewire. Anyway, the thing to do apparently is switch to Frostwire. So I'll be having a go at that tonight. I'll let you know how it goes.

The Metro, the Sun, and several other newspapers are reporting today on a NASA picture apparently showing a human-like figure walking across the surface of Mars. I can't decide whether they are having a laugh or not actually. I mean, it's a pile of rocks. Seriously, it's just a rock, take a look at the Daily Mail version.

Amy Winehouse appears to be back on crack, which is heart breaking, but to be honest, I'm losing sympathy.

School children between the ages of 11 and 14 will be required to take cooking lessons at school. I can't honestly say I find this a bad idea, except that it will be at the expense of other lessons. Lets just hope it's not core subjects. I bet they call it a science and make it part of the science curriculum or something mad like that. I did cooking at school. I think I stopped when I was 12 though. It didn't encourage me to cook at home. I do cook sometimes though. I'm the only bloke I know that can make a white sauce from scratch. Actually that's not true, I think friend Dave can do it. I wonder if Pete can. I must call him actually. I'll ask him.

I'm still all alone in the house with my family on the other side of the world. I do miss them, but I talk to them every day.

Beer and farting

The house seems big and empty without Dumpy and the Dragon. I drove them to the airport on Saturday. Dumpy was apparently super good on the flight. He's not old enough to have his own seat, but I think the crew managed to provide an extra seat for him and he slept all the way to Hong Kong. I had a quick video conference with them this morning before I felt for work. I didn't see the boy because he was asleep. I have a letter from the Dragon to open every day until I see her. Damn, wish I'd thought of that.

Anyway, these two weeks will see me learning how to live like a bachelor again. It seems very unnatural now. Beer and baked beans on the sofa, farting, and watching programmes about monster trucks is what I have planned for tonight.

Today will see the most important parliamentary debate on Europe since the signing of the Maastricht treaty in 1992. The debate will centre on the EU constitution which was scrapped and replaced with a "treaty", and more to the point, the fact that the government promised us a referendum, and then refused to give us one when they realised we'd vot against it. What's more, it looks very much like at least 30 government ministers are going to vote against the government. The Tories will also vote against the government, and the Lib Dems will sit on the fence abstaining as usual. The government have a big enough majority for this not to matter very much, though it will of course be embarrassing. But the really embarrassing thing is the fact that the PM isn't going to be there. Gordon organised this today so that he wouldn't have to face the wrath of the Euro-sceptics in the house. Yes ladies and gentlemen, our PM is a coward.

Celestial Mechanics at the Coffee Machine

I read this week that Mercury has an orbital-rotational resonance of 3:2. As I understand it, that means that Mercury rotates twice on its own axis in exactly the same time that it takes to orbit the sun twice. I was quite comfortable with that statement until I read that Mercury is the only known body in the universe that has an orbital-rotational resonance other than 1:1, although most things apparently have no orbital-rotational resonance at all. That confused me. The only body in the universe of which I am aware that orbits a body once in the same period that it takes to rotate once on its own axis (1:1 orbital-rotational resonance), is the moon. I know this because we always see the same face of the moon you see. So, either I don't understand orbital-rotational resonance, or there are other bodies in the universe that do the same as the moon.

So, I did the only thing I could think of to doing resolve my dilemma, I asked my buddy Dr. Sweetenham at the coffee machine. Now the good doctor doesn't have an answer for everything of course, and he's really a mathematician, so he was slightly out of his comfort zone, but he likes an academic challenge, and he came back with an answer within minutes. It would seem that there are indeed many bodies in the known universe that rotate at the same frequency as their orbit, especially smallish bodies close to each other like the earth and the moon. So there you have it folks, a potted definition of orbital-rotational resonance if you ever get stuck for small-talk at the coffee machine.

***

There was a plane crash at Heathrow yesterday, or a very rough landing, depending on your point of view. No one was seriously injured, but the plane suffered a reduction in the number of wheels and a loss of dimensional integrity. The dragon is due to fly out from Heathrow tomorrow. I toyed with the idea of trying to keep this information from her, but decided that it would probably best if she didn't find out about it by spotting the wreckage from her plane window. She's OK actually. She'll fly out tomorrow and I will join her in a couple of weeks. We will fly home together some time around valentines day, can't remember exactly. We've been married more than 3 years and we've never been apart for more than 1 night as far as I remember.

***

In other news, Bobby Fisher is dead, the MOD have lost the bank details for 600,000 people, Stephen Fry has broken his arm, and British gas have raised prices by 15%.

The time for wallowing is now officially over

It's time to stop wallowing in self pity and get on with the business of whatever the hell it is I do. I got an e-mail out of the blue this week inviting me to apply for a technical author role in Oxfordshire. I don't think the money is likely to be significantly better, but I'm thinking I might drop them a CV anyway. I have everything they are looking for and it could be a door of opportunity opening for me. Nothing ventured, nothing gained and all that.

Chinese New Year is almost upon us ladies and gentlemen. This is not usually something that I find a need to celebrate, but I'm going to be back in Taiwan this time, and we will probably see some fireworks, eat some traditional food, watch the dragons dancing etc. Dumpy and the dragon will go out there at the weekend, and I'll follow in February. I'll be without my family for two weeks. I haven't had to do that since I got married. Just another drawback of intercontinental relationships.

I'm going to mention politics. I know no one reads these bits, but I'm interested, and it's my show. Peter Haine has dropped a bollock over Labour Party donations. He's the work and pensions secretary. He's essentially accepted donations of £100,000 to his campaign fund without declaring them. This is serious, but the PM initially stood by him. However, this row has refused to die down and now the PM has not only taken a step back, he's called Mr Haine "incompetent". I don't like the guy, but part of me wants him to stay, because no one likes the guy, and as long as he is there, he's driving more nails into the coffin that is the Labour Party. Labour are now desperately trying to fling mud at the Tories by suggesting that they are not declaring "gifts", whatever that means.

I got an email this week about a tech author job in Oxfordshire. I wasn't really looking for a new job, but I have to admit, my current position isn't really stimulating me. I don't feel challenged. So I dropped them a CV. Nothing ventured I say. More news on that as we get it.

Finality

I guess it's all over now. The funeral was on Friday. Dumpy was spectacularly well behaved. He sat silently on my lap for the entire committal. He did throw himself into the floral tributes during the church service, but in some ways I think it lightened the atmosphere. I'm sure my father would have been amused by it. I hope he saw it and chuckled from wherever he is.

I went to visit my father on Thursday. I'm so glad I did. He looked just as though he was sleeping, really peaceful. They'd dressed him in a robe thing and he looked nice. The only thing that made it slightly strange was the fact that he had no glasses on, but I'm assuming they couldn't cremate them, so they removed them. He always wore glasses.

I've shaken a lot of hands, kissed a lot of cheeks, told many people I'm fine, and thanked a lot of people for coming. The difficult part is over. All I have to do now is fill the hole he left in my world with something.

I'm not scared

It's Wednesday and I will be taking the rest of the week off to return to Devon and attend the funeral. Last night the Dragon told me she sometimes feels as though my father is near her. I'm about the least spiritual person that you are ever likely to meet. I believe in nothing. But when she said that, I really wished I could feel him. The truth is that I don't feel my father. I just miss him.

Tomorrow will be the last chance I get to see him. I've been turning it over in my mind. I don't know that I want to see him, but I'm quite sure I'll regret it if I don't. I have the undertaker's number programmed into my phone. I looked up the location on Google Maps. I have to drive past the place tomorrow. I'm not scared. I don't know what bothers me about it.

Getting back to normal

I'm not going to talk about my father any more, other than to say thank you to those people who left notes here, sent emails, text messages etc. The funeral will take place on Friday. I'm not looking forward to it, but by the weekend I hope I can put everything behind me and get on with the business of being a Father and a husband.

There is a story in the news today about Jeremy Clarkeson. I quite like the guy, but he does annoy me from time to time. Recently he annoyed me by claiming that the row over the government loosing CDs containing names, addresses, and bank account details for 25 million people, was trivial. Clarkeson was so sure that loosing this data was trivial that he published his own bank account number and sort code in the Sun newspaper, which has a circulation of over 3 million. Since doing this it seems that someone has managed to set up a fraudulent direct debit on JC's account. The fraudster is not without style. It seems the only beneficiary is a diabetes charity.

To Clarkeson's credit, he's publicly admitted that he was completely wrong. But we can learn a lot from this saga, most significantly that the man in the street is generally not aware of the importance of data security. It's worth noting also that the Sun column did not carry all the data that would be available to people with access to the CDs that went missing. It did not for instance include his address, though that would probably not be particularly difficult to obtain.

Brittany Spears seems to be in trouble yet again. I can't get worked up about Brittany as a performer, but I can't help but feel sorry for the girl now. There is clearly something wrong with her. Speaking as a parent myself, I'd be moving heaven and earth to prove I was a responsible father if I was threatened with the prospect of loosing custody of my son. Brittany appears to be lurching from disaster to disaster. There can only be two reasons for this; either she cares nothing for her children, or she is in desperate need of help. My money is on the second option.

I have come to the conclusion that people who should have grown up and haven't, are nearly always looking for something. I can't put Brittany in this category really, since she is only 25 or something. But take Kate Moss, she's my age and she's still falling down drunk at parties. I'm not suggesting that she's not having a good time, I just can't understand why she hasn't grown out of it. If the novelty hasn't worn off, if she hasn't found more worthwhile ways to spend her time, something must be missing from her life.